current antitrust laws allow for patent and copyright protection to be destroyed - all you need to do is complain about the 75% market share a software product has, and bam! you have your antitrust case... and that's not a problem?

If the anti-trust laws ( and I admit I'm not up to speed on them ) are in fact violating patent/copyright law...that...is a problem...and it needs to be addressed.

Nothing...absolutely nothing...should supercede the patent/copyright regulations...they are the foundation of our creative protection.

Eg ;)

December 1st, 2005, 04:58 PM

Negative

Eg &gt; that's exactly what happened in the Microsoft case. In 2000, MS was found to have violated antitrust laws because of:
- a 95% market share in the Intel-compatible PC market
- no viable alternatives being available
- potential competitors face high barriers to entry

MS was then ordered to be broken up in two parts; in 2001, that decision was reversed, but the antitrust violations were upheld; later in 2001, the case was settled, designed to "more fully open the computer software market to competing products." Nine states didn't like that settlement and demanded for MS to disclose and license all source code for its IE browser. In 2002, judge Kollar-Kotelly luckily denied that request, but upheld the settlement decisions that included the "disclosure of software code involving the installation of middleware in Windows."

If the antitrust laws would have been upheld, MS could have been ordered to give up all of its source code...

December 1st, 2005, 05:05 PM

Egaladeist

Hi Neg,

In the US...and I had to look this up because I'm Canadian :D...a patent is supposed to exist for 20 years and there are cases where an extension is allowed...the present patent protection seems more than adequate...
provided it's not interfered with...

Quote:

The patent is issued in the name of the United States under the seal of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and is either signed by the Director of the USPTO or is electronically written thereon and attested by an Office official. The patent contains a grant to the patentee, and a printed copy of the specification and drawing is annexed to the patent and forms a part of it. The grant confers “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” and its territories and possessions for which the term of the patent shall be generally 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed in the United States or, if the application contains a specific reference to an earlier filed application under 35 U.S.C. 120, 121 or 365(c), from the date of the earliest such application was filed, and subject to the payment of maintenance fees as provided by law.